11/28/2013
Happy Thanksgiving Day!!
Although since our family is full of medical type people, we have our Thanksgiving on Saturday.
So!! No work today for me! Let's do some wine.
Here's an old medical vacuum pump I cleaned up. It was the grossest thing I've ever done. Not that it was particularly dirty, but the dirt that was on it... I have no idea what it was. There's not enough bleach in the world to clean my hands off! I guess with hindsight being 20/20, I probably should've put some gloves on.
A lot of medical supplies get donated to the mission my wife is involved with, and half of our barn happens to be the warehouse for said mission. Stuff comes in, we sort through it, what the mission can use we keep, what they can't use heads to the trash. This was headed to the trash. I've had it for a couple years, but you need a glass carboy to use a vacuum pump in wine making as the plastic ones collapse. I finally got a glass carboy a couple months ago and I'm gearing up to use the pump today for the first time ever!!
I need a bung with two holes to use the pump to transfer wine from one container to another, which I still need to hunt down, but a bung with one hole will work perfect for degassing the wine, which I'm going to give it a shot today. Should be much easier than stirring the CO2 out with a long spoon. That takes forever!